TV writer Carla Lane 'dies aged 87'

Colin Ainscough

Television writer Carla Lane has died aged 87, according to reports.

Born in Liverpool, Lane rose to fame after creating several popular BBC sitcoms including The Liver Birds, Butterflies and Bread.

The Liver Birds series - based on flat-sharing Liverpudlian women - made famous the line: "'You dancing?', 'You asking?', 'I'm asking!', 'I'm dancing!'"

Lane continued writing into the 1990s and produced as well as wrote the BBC series Luv in 1993.

She was also a keen animal rights activist and had an animal rescue centre named after her three years ago in her home city.

Lane, who had two children, is thought to have died at a nursing home in Liverpool on Tuesday.

Lane's two sons, Nigel and Carl, confirmed their mother's death.

She received an OBE for services to writing in 1989 but returned it to Tony Blair in 2002 in disgust at animal cruelty.

In 1995, Lane was given a Royal Television Society award for her Outstanding Contribution to British Television.

Much of her work focused on women's lives and featured frustrated housewives and working class matriarchs, with several of her sitcoms based in Liverpool.

Lane was a close friend of Sir Paul McCartney's late wife Linda.

She once described their friendship as like that of "identical twins". Lane told the Observer in 2008: "We were friendship-struck from moment one. We used to sit on the lawn with our two puppies, kicking leaves, and looking at them.

"We were like two scientists trying to find out why people don't like animals, and what we'd do to them, if we only could."